New IE 8
Dean Hachamovitch, manager for Internet Explorer, just announced availability of Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 immediately following the keynote. Microsoft is also releasing specifications for two features that allow developers the create experience that extend beyond a web page: Web Activities, which let users to preview related sites without leaving the page, and Web Slices, which let users track activity on a particular portion of a page, such as an ongoing auction for an item on eBay.

Both available under open source licenses, though they differ in detail.

Silverlight 2 Beta 1

No surprise, Scott Guthrie has announced the release of Silverlight 2 Beta 1, available for download today.

The significance of the new release is that it delivers a larger subset of the .NET platform as a cross-browser plug-in. Included are a WPF like framework for developing user experiences, and portions of the network and web services stack. More details to come.

Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend will support Silverlight 2 Development

Scott Guthrie has just announced the availability of preview versions of Expression and Visual Studio 2008 support for building Silverlight applications. New role: Dev-igner, someone who can bridge the gap between design and development.

Read more from John Osborn.